Suarez ups the ante in English football's most bitter rivalry

Former Manchester United forward Mark Hughes has a memory about playing on Merseyside.

Warming up before a decisive game
against Liverpool in April 1992, Hughes went to collect a practice ball
from a young boy on the front row of the Main Stand. As he bent down,
the boy - a Liverpool fan - threw it at him.

Welcome to Anfield.

Flashpoint: Luis Suarez (left) and Patrice Evra clash

United and Liverpool have always felt their rivalry deeply. At times it has threatened to cross the line of what is decent. Now - after 183 games between the two clubs - we have Luis Suarez.

Banned for eight games by the FA for racially abusing United defender Patrice Evra, Suarez's suspension is due to end before a Barclays Premier League meeting between the great northern rivals at Old Trafford on February 11.

Always intense occasions, this game now promises to be toxic. United will feel they are entertaining a player with a record of racism. Liverpool blame Evra for besmirching their striker's good name.

Liverpool supporters made their feelings known at Wigan on Wednesday with a banner that labelled Evra a 'militant black guy'. Such enmity is only likely to fester and indeed grow until February 11.

Shirty: Liverpool players show their support for Luis Suarez

Those not familiar with the depth of feeling between the two sets of fans - if not the clubs themselves - should perhaps understand the mutual disdain goes deeper than football. It concerns a shared mistrust of each other as people.

As broadcaster Stuart Maconie wrote in his book on the north of England, Pies and Prejudice: 'It's not a rivalry. It's a vendetta, a blood feud that's Sicilian in intensity.

'It's contemptuous at best, raw, visceral hatred at worst, each always out for vengeance and reparation like the Hatfields and McCoys or the Campbells and McGregors.'

Many of those who pack Old Trafford and Anfield will know nothing of the history that set these two great cities at each other's throats.

They will care little for the row over cotton that blew up in the 1890s and led to Manchester bypassing Liverpool docks by building a ship canal down which it could ferry imports straight from the ocean.

Together: Liverpool are backing Luis Suarez

What they will tell you is how ingrained the feelings are. Liverpudlians believe their neighbours to be full of themselves. In Manchester, they patronise Scousers, viewing them as unsophisticated and insular.

On Wednesday, when Liverpool ran out at Wigan wearing T-shirts emblazoned with Suarez's name and number you could almost hear the tutting from the other end of the East Lancs Road.

The wisdom of those T-shirts will long be debated. Former United defender Paul McGrath expressed a widely-held view when he said: 'As a footballer having experienced racist comments, I was saddened to see Liverpool players wear those T-shirts.'

In part, both clubs share admirable values. Both managers, Kenny Dalglish and Sir Alex Ferguson, feel the pulse of their clubs like perhaps no other in the Premier League. It is this fierce local pride, though, that will serve to deepen the rift that threatens to open between Liverpool and United at every level.

Best of enemies: Robbie Fowler (left) and Roy Keane go head to head

As former United captain Roy Keane once said: 'At the heart of our club is something real, something identifiably Mancunian. It is fundamental to the success of the club. It's a precious commodity and Liverpool have it, too. Arsenal and Chelsea and Leeds don't.'

Part of this code, though, involves a refusal to concede ground. It was, by all accounts, Ferguson who accompanied Evra when he sought out a match official to report Suarez's comments at Anfield in October. It is thought Dalglish had a significant role in the aggressive statement published by Liverpool after Tuesday's guilty verdict released by the FA.

There have been times when the clubs have stood side by side.

Dalglish, in his first spell as manager, said at a League Managers' Association dinner in the late 1980s Ferguson - then a rookie in England - should be given more time at United. Many years on, when Liverpool manager Gerard Houllier suffered a ruptured aorta at a game against Leeds at Anfield, Ferguson was one of the first to visit the stricken Frenchman in hospital.

'He is a friend and it was good to see a friend,' said Houllier later.

These are, however, rare moments of cordiality. Fresher in the memory is the banner at the 2003 League Cup Final that read; 'Don't bomb Iraq, Nuke Manchester' while Liverpool supporters are labelled 'murderers' in a moronic, depressing dirge sung by some United fans in reference to the 1985 disaster at Belgium's Heysel Stadium.

At boardroom level, it will be hoped the Suarez issue doesn't permanently ruin relations between clubs who have always needed each other. That both are owned by Americans may, oddly, help a little.

There is no escaping the fact, though, that the clubs are entering new territory. Race has always been a sensitive issue in two ethnically diverse cities. Now it has shifted its focus from the suburbs to the football field, the only certainty is these great clubs will seek to blame each other.